Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok has been targeted by US lawmakers who view the app as a national security threat. FLORENCE LO / REUTERS
This ban in the US federal government comes after similar decisions by the European Commission and Canada.
U.S. federal agencies must clear their devices of the TikTok video app within 30 days, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordered on Monday (February 27). Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok has been targeted by US lawmakers who consider the application a threat to national security, and had banned its use on civil servants’ devices in a law passed in late December.
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The OMB’s order is taken pursuant to this law, ratified in early January by President Joe Biden. In a memorandum, the director of this office, Shalanda Young, asked government agencies to “remove and ban installations” application on devices owned or managed by them, and“prohibit internet traffic” from these devices to the application.
“An unacceptable level of risk”
The ultra-popular short and viral video platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is increasingly scrutinized by Westerners who fear that Beijing could thus access the data of users around the world. This ban in the US federal government comes days after a similar decision by the European Commission, which banned TikTok to its staff for “protect” the institution. The Government of Canada also announced on Monday that it will ban TikTok from the mobile devices it provides to its staff starting Tuesday, citing “an unacceptable level of risk” for privacy and security. TikTok has already been among the Chinese apps banned in India since 2020.
With more than a billion active users worldwide, TikTok is the sixth most used social platform, according to We Are Social’s latest digital evolution report, published in January. TikTok acknowledged in November that some employees in China could access European user data, and admitted in December that employees had used that data to stalk journalists. But the group denies any Chinese government control or access to its data.
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